SAN JOSE — When San Jose State University football coach Mike MacIntyre took a lucrative job at the University of Colorado a couple of weeks ago, I wailed and gnashed my teeth.

I know: In the ruthless new world of college sports, a picture of a football coach illustrates the word “nomad” in the dictionary. Maybe it is San Jose State’s fate to hire an up-and-comer who will stay only for a cup of coffee.

Still, I mourn the loss of talent and wonder about the strength of our community glue. In the circles I run in — journalism, law enforcement, politics, nonprofits — I’ve seen a quirky but noticeable exodus of leaders from San Jose in the past 12 to 15 years.

Ex-Mercury News publisher Joe Natoli? Vice president for finance at the University of Miami. Ex-SJSU President Bob Caret? President of the University of Massachusetts.

Former Councilwoman Iola Williams? She returned to her hometown of Hattiesburg, Miss. Labor leader Amy Dean? A Chicago-based consultant for unions and other progressive groups.

Natural moves?

You might say, “What’s so strange about that? People retire, they get better jobs, they move on. Why bewail their passing? Isn’t new talent arriving?”

Well, maybe — just not in equal numbers. In an admittedly unscientific survey, I counted more than 25 leaders who have left the city for other pastures (see the chart at www.mercurynews.com/scott-herhold). I counted only a half-dozen of the same stature who have arrived.

As someone who has spent more than 35 years covering one area and its largest city — I admit to being a homer — the diaspora unsettles me. Communities thrive not just with new people, but with long-term commitment from multiple generations.

Making money

I should stipulate that I’m talking about public life and San Jose, not the valley in general.

When the Mercury News did its first big series on downtown in 1983, an urban guru told me, “The first question you have to ask about any city is ‘How do people make their money?’ “

Originally, San Jose made its money through agriculture, a stable industry that required constant reinvestment in equipment, canneries and seeds.

For the past six decades, however, San Jose residents have made their money primarily through one of two main avenues: development or high tech.

Both offered profits that were quick. With a few exceptions, neither has demanded the constant reinvestment — the community glue — that characterizes an old-line industrial town like Cincinnati.

What should have been mainstays of manufacturing fled: In 1972, Bob Malott, the head of FMC, moved the company’s headquarters to Chicago. FMC, an old-line San Jose company, eventually closed its main plant here.

In their 1982 book, “Movers and Shakers,” SJSU professor Terry Christensen and Mercury News writer Phil Trounstine — now the co-founder of Calbuzz, a political website — pointed to what they called the “branch office” phenomenon. With few company headquarters, we attracted people who did not see San Jose as their ultimate destination.

“In the corporate world, if you stayed in San Jose, it was a dead end,” Christensen told me. “That shouldn’t be true of the public sector folks. Maybe part of it is that we’re such a young city that we don’t have that many fourth-generation families.”

Reasons for leaving

A litany of reasons beckons people away. For a police chief like Bill Lansdowne, the pension structure virtually decrees that he depart San Jose. As chief in San Diego, he can build a new pension to go along with his retirement payment here.

Others depart for personal reasons: Political consultant Jay Rosenthal left for Toronto because his wife got an important library job there. John Weis, the assistant redevelopment director, left San Jose to teach part-time at Boston University and to be close to family.

Still others leave for reasons that reflect the direction of a particular industry: A slimmed-down Mercury News, for example, has resulted in a diaspora of editorial talent.

“If you look at the institutions that bring in talent — the newspaper, City Hall, the museums — many of them have contracted,” says Dean Munro, an ex-mayoral aide and now the leader of the local chapter of the Positive Coaching Alliance.

The other day, I called up one expat who was born and bred in San Jose: former construction trades chief John Neece, who grew up just south of downtown. He told me that he and his wife left San Jose for Oregon just before the housing market crashed in 2007-08.

“I never thought I’d leave,” he told me. “It’s a real major adjustment, because I always loved San Jose. But now that I go back, I can’t wait to get out of there.”

In a video clip recorded by a student, a psychology instructor at Orange Coast College told her class that the election of Donald Trump was “an act of terrorism” – prompting an official complaint from the school’s Republican Club.